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28
Merit Grade .
Until such time as a comprehensive qualifying examination
is established or approved by the Minister of Health, the
possession of an additional qualification (appropriate to the
duties performed) or approved length of service will be necessary
to progress from Grade VI to Grade VII.
. . . . It is recommended that assimilation into the
proposed revised grades of salary should be on the basis of
corresponding points—a principle considered and approved
by the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal as a right one. As an
example of its application, an officer at the maximum of the
old scale fixed as a result of the recommendations of the
National Joint Council should be treated as if he had continued
on an extended scale beyond the old maximum and he should
retain his old incremental date if not going straight to the
new maximum.''
These recommendations are not in excess of salaries now granted
in some London boroughs and in some districts close to the
metropolis.
As the Guild pointed out the cost to the Council of the adoption
of the whole of these proposals would be only a small fraction of the
product of a penny rate.
The sanitary inspectors remaining with the Council may be
divided into the two following categories:—
(i) elderly inspectors who by reason of age are unable to apply
for other appointments, and
(ii) younger inspectors who are losing no opportunity of
applying for appointments elsewhere with Councils willing to
pay a reasonable salary for good work.
The Council in attempting to carry out with the present reduced
staff of sanitary inspectors all its statutory duties, which can only
be performed satisfactorily by an adequate staff, places on the
remaining sanitary inspectors an unfair burden, injurious to their
health and mental wellbeing. This will in time result in a further
diminution of available sanitary inspectors and, ultimately, in a
complete breakdown in this branch of the health service.
The Public Health Department has not yet entirely cleared up
the arrears of work which accumulated during the difficult post-war
period when the inspectorial staff of the department was greatly
reduced by the loss of many inspectors in the prime of their service—
four of them to one London borough alone—and had the Councillors
directing the policy of the Council learned more thoroughly the
lesson which was at that time so obvious the Public Health Department
and the citizens of the borough would not now be faced with
the possibility of a recurrence of the difficulties then experienced.